Month: October 2025

Chill Links

The traffickers are winning the war on drugs.

Trump is looking the wrong way in the Arctic. Forget Greenland; worry about Alaska.

I remember taking a screen shot of a video, and when I opened it in Paint, the video was playing in it! What witchcraft is this?

The Rise and Fall of the Powdered Wig.

Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part V: Life In Cycles.

I miss the great philosophers.

Everything you think of as “wokeness” is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization. Mostly true.

Army “Absolutely Needs” Drones Like Russia’s Shahed-136: 25th Infantry Division Commander. Correct.

Thieves steal priceless jewels from the Louvre in daring Paris heist.

Conservatives offer women performative reverence. Progressives offer equally performative protection. But no one offers women the thing they were once promised: freedom.

Women Experience More Incivility at Work — Especially from Other Women.

The Liberal Misinformation Bubble About Youth Gender Medicine. How the left ended up disbelieving the science.

Draining

Chill Annoying

Maybe we should’ve immigrated, but where would we have gone?

Any country that would accept us also really sucks and is also in decline. Sad times.

The UK is cooked. Germany has shot themselves in the face. Spain has an economy like a flaming dumpster. Australia is killing itself with too much immigration and their housing market is stygian. The same goes for Canada. Maybe New Zealand?

I mean, it’s always the case that nowhere is free of problems. But most countries seem to be circling the drain by self-caused and completely-preventable induced crises.

Tuna

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Tech

That is in-fucking-sane.

The left really is fully in degrowth anti-tech mode. AI is a tool like any other. It has its uses. For instance, I put it to work it to create an infrastructure usage estimation and comparison spreadsheet with tunable parameters in about an hour. I could’ve done it all myself, but it would’ve taken me 5-6 hours (it’s a quite complex spreadsheet). But I could do this because:

1) I am extremely familiar with all the infrastructure involved so I’d notice any hallucinations.
2) I’ve done infrastructure capacity planning for twenty years.
3) And I’m already very competent with Excel.

It wouldn’t have saved me nearly as much time if those three items weren’t true and also probably would’ve produced something inaccurate without my manually fixing what it got wrong. But the key is: it did save me tons of time.

Buse

Chill Evil

Woman makes her bf crash.

It’s claimed women can’t be abusive because they are “not a threat.” But of course they are. My mom was the physically and mentally abusive one in my parents’ relationship, for instance. And wasn’t averse to attempted stabbings.

What the woman in this clip did could’ve easily killed them both. In my own life, I imagine the look on this poor dude’s face is the same as mine must’ve been when I was with my horrid ex.

These days, this demonic person would immediately be kicked out of the car and would never see me again. Back then, I bought into the “relationships are work” nonsense. So that’s some improvement.

Commercial Logic

Chill Political Economy

Why do stores and malls let so many storefronts stand empty for months or years? Wouldn’t having tenants bringing in SOME money be better than leaving the property to rot and generate zero rent?

It’s because commercial loans do not work like private mortgages. They refinance more frequently (every 5–10 years), and the value and loan terms are set by the property’s Net Operating Income (NOI) as well as the quality and length of leases. Loan covenants are also a factor. Many lenders require consent for below-market rents or very short terms.

As implied above, however, the overriding reason that commercial spaces sit empty is that locking in a low rent on a long lease can knock millions off the property value and jeopardize the next refinance. And since refis can be as frequent as every five years in CRE, this is not a trivial concern.

An Offensive Offensive

Chill Evil, Prediction

Russia’s latest big Ukraine offensive gains next to nothing, again

Ian Welsh: WINNING! OMG I LOVE PUTIN!

Everyone else: Seems not that great to sacrifice 500+ people for every dozen meters gained. That’s not really sustainable.

More seriously, Russia’s strategic position is incredibly weak and worsening as the war goes on. Time used to be on Putin’s side but as Europe seems to be waking up to the peril a bit, it no longer is.

At the pace of the past 30 days, seizing what remains of the four regions Mr Putin already claims—Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia—would take until June 2030. (For Russia to occupy all of Ukraine would require a further 103 years.)

Russia will never occupy all of Ukraine because the attacker’s problem is that as the lines get smaller, they also get easier to defend. (This is due to having less distance to spread personnel and war materiel over.) Ukraine will not give up the fight easily as they know a genocide will occur if they do, so the war will grind on 2-3 more years until Russia agrees to a cease-fire and then tries again in 7-10 years.

That’s my best guess, anyway.

Chill Links

Global Economy in Flux, Prospects Remain Dim.

H-1B Visa Holders Disappear From US Housing Market. Good.

Memphis Minnie.

Average New Car Prices Rise Above $50,000 for the First Time Ever.

Let the US credit score wars begin.

China has found Trump’s pain point – rare earths.

Another ‘she-cession’ is rearing its head: Women are leaving the workforce at alarming rates. One of the things RTO was designed to do: get rid of women and disabled people.

America is ‘going broke slowly’ says J.P. Morgan, as national debt balloons and tariff revenue looks shaky.

How Psychedelic Mushrooms Evolved Their Magic.

NATO Must Act to Stop Russia’s Dangerous New Campaign. Indeed.

Where Have All the Young Home Buyers Gone? Check the Stock Market.

Kathryn Bigelow’s Warning to America.

Google Ultron.

Resistance Is Cringe. But it’s also effective.

Inflations

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Political Economy

It’s not that there are no competent people overseas in the countries that typically receive offshored jobs. Of course there are. In fact, many of the best end up here as immigrants in the US.

But the competence level is certainly vastly different. In my experience the average Indian in India is about 1/4 to 1/8 as competent as the average American. At least in tech, though I’ve heard it’s similar in other fields. The average Filipino is maybe half as competent. And the average LATAM hire is maybe 60% as competent as an American.

That’s not great! Part of it is worse education, tons of credential inflation and concomitant lack of experience. Screening is also not nearly as competent or thorough when done overseas. That all leads to offshore teams fucking things up left and right while the few remaining onshore people spend long, long hours fixing it all. All to usually not even save money in the end.

But sure, tell me again how efficient business is.

Soul Removal

Chill Annoying, Rant

It’s creepy, all the women with “Instagram face.” They’ve all gotten the same work done on their faces by the same plastic surgeons using the same techniques. And as a result, they all look like Stepford Wives clones. I’m sure men will get the blame for this as women aren’t usually forced to take accountability but trust me, ladies, men do not want this, do not like it, and wish you would not inflict it on yourselves.

The reason I was thinking about this is I saw a photo of Phoebe Cates from the 1980s. This photo, specifically.

She’s very beautiful but even better what makes her face distinctive hasn’t been sanded off, polished, redacted for plasticine pseudo-perfection. In other words, she still looks ensouled. She looks like a real person. And that’s so much more appealing than the power-sanded version of Phoebe would be. Why is this not obvious?